No organization can seek the advantages of a
paperless Internet business system without first having a relatively
sophisticated internal control computer system. The Internet is a data transfer
medium and users need a database of their own before beginning to think of
sending and receiving data to and from third parties.Supply chain management is
not e-commerce - instead of 'electronic marketplaces', what is required first of
all is standardization of the way in which an industry or a group of companies
operates. Before we can have successful e-commerce in coffee, we need efficient
commerce, and this is where the Internet offers huge potential that is
increasingly being exploited. Prime examples already operating in the coffee
industry include the London LIFFE CONNECT™ futures trading system (08.05 Futures
markets), the GCA's XML contract (04.04.03 Contracts), the eCOPS system (next
section), shipping portals and tracking systems (05.01.00, Logistics). These are
widely used by many participants in the coffee trade.
However, one of the original expectations behind
electronic documentation was that such systems could eventually link all or at
least most actors along the entire coffee chain. And that the logical outcome of
such a process would, over time, facilitate the emergence of electronic market
places where buyers and sellers of green coffee would meet.
Instead, electronic
documentation has developed into something quite different from the original
vision. In today's coffee trade most such systems with automatic
database updates generate internal documents only and then email or send
confirmations to third parties. These third party documents must then be entered
manually into the database of the party receiving them.
The problem for fully automated documentation
systems is twofold in that experience has shown that few in the coffee trade are
(yet?) willing to pay a third party for document generation and, individual
companies want to maintain their own database. Documents that update a communal
database might save duplicating data entry but in the coffee trade the communal
database concept is still perceived as less than secure. Many large coffee
companies today employ electronic databases and documentation systems but these
are used internally. And, as far as we know, they are seldom linked to other
parties in the coffee trade and certainly play no role when it comes to trading
green coffee. This then relegates the concept of electronic market places for
green coffee still further into the future…
But, electronic documentation systems are here and
they are being used extensively although not as fully as one would have
expected. Section 06.03 shows how such systems can or should work.